The Feast of St. Nicholas

December 6 was the Feast of St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas is a very popular saint and is a special protector of children. "According to legend, in the community that St. Nicholas served, there lived a very poor man who could not afford to give a dowry of any kind for his three daughters. In fact he was so poor he could not afford to keep feeding them. So this unhappy man was at the point of turning his daughters out of his house where they surely would have come to no good. St. Nicholas secretly gave all three dowries so that these young girls could be saved from shame. This is said to have originated the custom of giving presents in secret on the eve of December 6, the day of St. Nicholas."

Very few families still celebrate this feast, but my parents always did while my siblings and I were growing up, and it was always something I looked forward to. On the eve of the feast day, we would put our boots out by the fireplace and wake to them filled w small gifts, candy canes and, in what my parents found humorous, a lump of coal. We celebrated the Feast of St. Nick every year that I can remember as a child. It kind of signified the beginning of the Christmas season for us.

This is yet another tradition I want to continue for Emily. Rather than put out her boots, we hung her stocking on the fireplace mantel.

She made sure she went straight to bed that nite so that St. Nick would come. The next morning, she came into our room squealing that her stocking had fallen and that she wanted to go check it. We told her to wait a few minutes until we brushed our teeth etc -- she said "OK". With my mouth full of toothpaste, I hear her downstairs screaming "Mommy, Daddy, I got a NiNi ornament!" Needless to say, she didn't wait. (NiNi was one of the five Beijing Olympic mascots, and she was on NiNi's team at preschool.)


Emily enjoyed celebrating the eve of St. Nick, so much so that the next morning, she asked to check her stocking again.